Critical Essay by Kathryn Hume

In the following essay, Hume correlates a perspectival rocket subtext—either a view from above or a view from below—to the organization of Gravity's Rainbow in terms of philosophical questions, technical issues, and the relationship between reader and text.

With “a screaming comes across the sky,” Gravity's Rainbow wrenches us into the world of The Rocket. Just so, the V-2 magnetically draws the novel's characters into that same world, its fields of force generating the major actions and informing the images. Time and again, the rocket imposes its code on elements of the story: Tyrone Slothrop becomes Rocketman; marriage turns into union with a rocket; orgasm corresponds to launching...